


Puzzle

by silvrhuntress



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-19
Updated: 2011-03-19
Packaged: 2017-10-17 02:51:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/172126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvrhuntress/pseuds/silvrhuntress





	Puzzle

“Dude. Stop pacing, all right?” Dean pleaded when Castiel’s trench coat billowed, blocking the TV screen again, out as he smoothly turned on one heel, every move full of coiled anger, ready to strike. The sheer power in him was almost terrifying, especially when it was barely contained in the dingy motel room where the angel and hunter were currently hiding out. Castiel’s nerdy little holy tax accountant disguise was too damn effective sometimes; even Dean found himself forgetting that there was a scary fucking _warrior of God_ in there.

Blue eyes targeted Dean’s with laser-sharp focus, the stare never wavering as he paced to the other side of the room. Dean couldn’t interpret that look. It wasn’t _What’s the human talking about now?_ or _I know something you don’t_ or even _I’m bored with Earth_. It was somehow something more, something full of anger and wrath and blood and all the shit that he’d learned really made up angels, instead of fluffy wings and halos. Thank God it wasn’t directed at him, or he might well be hiding under the bed instead of on it.

Turn. Billow. Pace.

“Cas.” Sighing, Dean turned off the TV, glad this week’s episode was a rerun – and not even one he liked. Idiot doctors didn’t know shit about banishing a ghost.

The angel looked away, staring off into space as he paced by the foot of Dean’s bed. Dean kicked his legs over the side and went up the narrow aisle between the beds, putting himself squarely in Castiel’s path.

For a moment, it looked like the angel was going to go over or through him. He didn’t stop until he was an inch away, giving ‘personal space’ a whole new meaning. Dean felt the trench coat slap against his shins, even through his jeans.

“Cas,” he repeated, holding up his hands, though that meant touching the angel’s chest. He looked down, surprised to feel fabric under his hands, but that just sparked his inspiration. “Dude, you’re too tense.”

“I should be out there, fighting –”

“And getting your ass kicked?” Dean asked. “A freaking celestial assassin is after your ass, dude. Let Gabriel handle it.”

“Gabriel is –”

“Yeah. A pain in the ass, a flake, a complete dick usually. But he’s also a fucking archangel and Sam’s got his leash. Trust the two of them to take care of it.”

Castiel exhaled sharply, still staring into Dean’s eyes, the tension practically radiating from him like sparks from a bad power transformer. Dean was half amazed his EMF meter hadn’t exploded, at least until he remembered angels didn’t do the EMF thing like plain old spirits did.

He shook his head – Castiel’s stare tended to scramble his thoughts – and looked back down, saying, “You’re too damn tense. No wonder.” He took hold of the trench coat and gave it a shove over Castiel’s shoulders. The startled angel blinked and looked down, but not in time to rescue the coat as it hit the floor. He turned to look, giving Dean the opportunity to work on the cheap suit jacket. It was a little more difficult, since it was tailored, but Dean Winchester wasn’t one to be defeated by a wool-poly blend from Sears. The suit jacket followed the trench coat’s downward path.

“Dean –”

“You talk too much, Cas. And always at the wrong times,” Dean interrupted, working on Castiel’s tie. Thankfully it was, as always, loose, so Dean was able to give it enough of a tug to pull the tail through the knot. It was the wrong way to remove a tie, but he didn’t care. He threw it aside, kind of hoping it would land over the radiator and catch fire, though that much polyester would just melt rather than burning.

Castiel let out an exasperated sigh and just looked back at Dean’s eyes. Dean knew better than to get trapped; he unbuttoned the top two buttons of Castiel’s dress shirt before taking hold of his right hand so he could work on the cuff. “You’re too tense.”

“I don’t see how undressing me is going to change that.”

For one moment, Dean’s brain _went there_.

Yeah.

Okay.

Because... undressing. The angel. _His_ angel.

Then he shook his head, wrenching his thoughts out of _that_ gutter, trying to figure out how to explain without actually having any sort of decent command of the English language at the moment. So he concentrated instead on getting the button open and got Castiel’s sleeve folded up a few times, then switched to his left sleeve and did the same.

And of course, that’s when he realized the angel had _perfect_ hands. His knuckles had never been broken in a fight. He had no scars, no calluses. His fingers were long but powerful, not girly. Dean could almost close his hand around the angel’s wrist; such fragility was deceptive, given how easily Castiel had thrown him around in the past. The muscles in his forearms were defined, dusted lightly with hair a shade lighter than the tousled, dark hair that always made him look like he’d just gotten out of bed after a good fuck –

 _Do. Not. Go. There._

Dean let go and pointed toward the cheap kitchenette table. “Go sit,” he said, without quite enough authority in his voice, but the angel went anyway, head tilted in that way that he always did, when trying to figure out why humans acted the way they did.

Feeling a little more balanced, now that the whole personal space thing was redefined, Dean stepped over the abandoned clothes and went to ransack Sam’s belongings. Sam always had stuff to do; even a geek like him couldn’t spend all his time browsing internet porn.

Dean examined the half dozen books and dismissed all of them as too damn boring. Sam’s old Blackberry was in there, but Cas didn’t want to read his dorky emails from college – Aha! He pulled out the puzzle he’d given Sam for Christmas a couple of months back. It was only 1000 pieces, but it was the type of thing that would fry your eyeballs – a pine forest in the snow. Every piece was a mix of green, white, and brown. Even Sam had given up after a while.

It would keep Cas occupied for hours.

Triumphant, he brought the box to the kitchenette table and sat down, opening it to dump out the pieces. “There,” he declared, tossing the box aside when he was sure he’d gotten all the pieces out. No need to make it easy on the angel by giving him a picture to work from.

Castiel looked from Dean’s face to the puzzle pieces and back, like a bird that wasn’t sure if it wanted to eat or fly away. “What’s this?” he asked suspiciously.

“A puzzle.” Dean picked up a couple of pieces and showed Cas how they didn’t fit – because no Winchester born would ever have the luck to pull off a perfect fit on the first try (or the fiftieth, for that matter, but _he_ wasn’t the one doing the puzzle this time). “You put the pieces together to form a picture.”

That was all the hinting Dean gave, though not out of spite. He just kind of assumed that Castiel would do... well, the logical thing. Sort through the pieces. Put the straight edge pieces in one pile. Find the corners.

Instead, the angel turned his confused regard to the pile of pieces. Tentatively, he touched them, then sifted his fingers through as though more interested in combing through and petting them than in assembling them into an orderly whole. He did it again and Dean just watched, fascinated by how _intense_ he was, over a silly puzzle.

The angel’s blue eyes narrowed thoughtfully. He got his other hand involved, this time pressing into the pile, smoothing them out, spreading them across the table, leaning forward to stretch and reach, fingers splayed. He didn’t turn them all face-up; he just carefully moved the pieces with broad, sure sweeps of his hands, until the whole table was covered with a single layer of pieces.

And then... he stared, leaning over, one hand braced on either side of the table. The muscles in his forearms flexed and bunched as he shifted his weight; the tendons danced over his knuckles as his fingers curled over the edges.

Dean’s throat went dry. He’d been about to say something cocky about the angel doing this all wrong, but... words...

Then Cas lifted his right hand and reached to one side of the table, lifting a piece – not a corner or straight edge, but some random middle piece. He examined it, rubbing his fingers over the smooth picture side and the rougher cardboard side, turning it to drag a fingernail along the edge, where tiny fibers remained from when the piece had been cut.

After a breathlessly long ten seconds, he looked back at the table and reached for another piece with his left hand.

“Dude, you can’t just –” Dean said, and then shut his fucking mouth.

Castiel joined the two pieces perfectly, turning them over to look at how the picture came together, before checking the back, as if expecting the cardboard to look different.

He tilted his head and gave Dean a questioning look, as if asking if this was the deep meaning behind the puzzle.

Dean surrendered. “Go for it,” he said, leaning back in his chair. If the angel wanted to play some weird-ass form of Concentration with the puzzle pieces, who was he to knock it? At least he wasn’t pacing anymore. Besides, he couldn’t stop staring at those fingers, holding the two puzzle pieces pinched together at the joint, the way his empty fingers curled slightly toward his palm, how his wrist twisted as he studied the image on the photo side.

Castiel cleared a spot and set down the paired pieces, scanning the tabletop once more.

And then... he put the fucking puzzle together, one piece at a time, hands moving over the surface with perfect precision and grace, never pausing for a moment as he reached for the next piece and the next and the next. When he picked up an upside-down piece, he flipped it between two fingers as he moved it into position. He never fumbled. Never mismatched. There was none of that trial-and-error that always irritated Dean, that point where you were just jamming pieces together blindly to see if they’d fit, without even paying attention to the picture.

It was so... _Castiel_ , the way he moved with such absolute precision and certainty, the way he did everything else, from healing to fighting to killing, that Dean could only stare, occasionally remembering to breathe, as he watched those fucking perfect hands move.

After the last piece clicked into place, Dean realized he could taste blood on his dry, cracked bottom lip from where he’d been chewing it.

Castiel regarded the completed puzzle for a moment. Then he turned and looked at Dean, reaching –

Dean’s heart stopped as Castiel’s perfect fingers brushed his jaw. One thumb swept over his bottom lip, clearing away the drop of blood, head tilted as if to silently asked why Dean was bleeding.

He managed to get a breath past the lump in his throat. “You. Uh,” he said eloquently, looking desperately away from those bright, bright eyes, his gaze falling naturally on the completed puzzle.

Castiel followed his gaze, his fingers still cupping Dean’s chin, thumb just resting on the edge of his bottom lip. “Did I do this right?” he asked in that low, rough voice of his.

 _Oh, fuck yes._


End file.
